PAM.' 

S.  AMEU 


/  J/ V 


The  Work  of  the  Clergy 


and  the 


Religious  Persecution 
in  Mexico 


By  ATTORNEY  RODOLFO  MENENDEZ  MENA 
Merida,  Yucatan,  Mexico 


Published  by 

LATIN-AMERIGAN  NEWS  ASSOCIATION 
1400  Broadway,  New  York  City 


Does  Mexico  Interest  You? 

Then  you  should  read  the  following  pamphlets: 

What  the  Catholic  Church  Has  Done  for  Mexico,  by  Doctor 

Paganel  . 

The  Agrarian  Law  of  Yucatan . . 

The  Labor  Law  of  Yucatan . 

International  Labor  Forum . 

Intervene  in  Mexico,  Not  to  Make,  but  to  End  War,  urges 

Mr.  Hearst,  with  reply  by  Holland . 

The  President’s  Mexican  Policy,  by  F.  K.  Lane . 

The  Religious  Question  in  Mexico . 

A  Reconstructive  Policy  in  Mexico . 

Manifest  Destiny . 

What  of  Mexico. . 

Speech  of  General  Alvarado . 

Many  Mexican  Problems . 

Charges  Against  the  Diaz  Administration . 

Carranza  . 

Stupenduous  Issues . 

Minister  of  the  Catholic  Cult . 

Star  of  Hope  for  Mexico . 

Land  Question  in  Mexico . 

Open  Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  Chicago,  Ill. 

How  We  Robbed  Mexico  in  1848,  by  Robert  H.  Howe . 

What  the  Mexican  Conference  Really  Means . 

The  Economic  Future  of  Mexico . 

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} 


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THE  WORK  OF  THE  CLERGY  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS 
PERSECUTION  IN  MEXICO. 


jt 

Perhaps  the  principal  argument  employed  by  the  reac¬ 
tionary  party  of  Mexico  before  the  government  and  in  the 
press  of  the  United  States  to  attack  and  lower  the  prestige 
of  the  Constitutionalist  Revolution,  is  the  one  which  re¬ 
lates  to  the  religious  question. 

Constitutionalism,  especially  since  the  rupture  between 
the  Convention  party  and  Mr.  Carranza — has  been  presented 
by  its  enemies  before  the  American  people,  as  an  implacable 
and  systematic  persecutor  of  religion  in  all  its  forms  and 
manifestations;  as  the  vandalic  destroyer  of  temples  and 
images;  as  the  insatiable  and  cruel  executioner  of  timid  and 
innocent  priests;  in  one  word,  as  an  atheist  and  implanter 
and  propagator  of  atheism  in  Mexico.  They  have  even 
tried  to  demonstrate  that  this  and  several  other  dissolvent 
theories  constitute  the  fundamental  basis  and  the  reason 
for  existence  of  the  constitutionalist  policy,  at  least  in  that 
part  which  refers  to  the  internal  government  of  the  Re¬ 
public. 

It  is  necessary  to  acknowledge  that  the  infamous  cam¬ 
paign  carried  on  by  the  enemies  of  the  Revolution  must 
have  impressed,  and  in  fact  has  impressed,  in  a  painful 
and  profound  manner,  a  nation  so  eminently  religious  as 
is  the  American  people;  a  nation  so  zealous  of  freedom  of 
thought  and  so  respectful  of  another’s  beliefs;  a  nation 
where  such  freedom  and  such  respect  are  considered,  and 
justly  so,  as  the  most  precious  and  glorious  conquest  of 
contemporaneous  civilization  and  the  most  sacred  property 
of  human  spirit. 

The  acknowledgment  of  this  truth  makes  it  imperative  to 
expose  in  detail  before  the  American  people,  the  facts  which 
constitute  the  religious  persecution  of  which  the  Mexican 
reactionaries  complain,  and  the  role  which  the  clergy  has 
had  and  still  seeks  to  have  in  the  history  of  the  country; 
because  the  struggle  which  Constitutionalism  has  waged 
and  continues  waging,  is  not  and  cannot  be  a  struggle 
against  religion  in  general  and  much  less  against  the  re¬ 
ligious  idea  in  abstract,  an  idea  which  is  imminent  in  man; 
hut  it  is  a  struggle  exclusively  against  the  clergy,  against 
the  catholic  clergy  in  Mexico,  since  Catholicism  is,  or  at¬ 
tempts  to  be,  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  any  other,  the 
dominant  religion  in  the  Republic. 


3 


The  people  of  the  United  States,  protestant  in  its  majority, 
anu  educated  in  a  spirit  of  liberalism  and  democracy  with¬ 
in  that  religion,  cannot,  without  an  exact  and  deep  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  Mexican  question,  decide  on  it,  and  much  less 
understand  it.  Our  object  is  to  furnish  the  American 
reader  with  the  necessary  data  so  that  he  become  fully 
acquainted  with  the  subject  and  judge  it,  not  from  the 
American  point  of  view,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  pro¬ 
testant,  liberal,  democratic,  cultured,  educated  nation,  a  lover 
of  freedom  and  of  the  free  examination  of  things,  but  from 
the  Mexican  point  of  view;  that  is  to  say,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  nation  consisting  of  a  small  minority  of  wealthy 
individuals,  fanatical,  accustomed  to  despotism  and  tyranny, 
systematically  opposed  to  all  that  aims  to  deprive  it  of  its 
odious  liberties  and  unjust  privileges,  a  bitter  enemy  of 
all  that  spells  freedom  and  education  of  the  real  people; 
and  by  a  numberless  majority  of  analphabet  Indians, 
brought  up  in  servitude,  superstition  and  idolatry,  slaves 
of  routine  and  tradition,  opposed  to  all  innovation,  on  ac¬ 
count  of  the  inherent  distrust  and  fear  of  subjugated  races. 
Somber  extremes  among  which  sparkles  as  a  bright  sun¬ 
beam  in  a  tempestuous  sky,  the  so-called  middle  class,  the 
only  social  element  capable  of  strengthening  the  nation,  of 
teaching  and  guiding  it  to  progress.  To  this  class  belongs 
the  intellectual  and  thinking  class  of  Mexico,  and  this  is  the 
one  which  has  produced,  from  the  time  of  the  viceroys,  to 
date,  the  men  who  have  been  an  honor  to  the  country  in  the 
liberal  political  field,  in  literature,  in  sciences  and  arts,  in 
the  militia,  in  commerce  and  the  industries.  From  it  surged 
the  illustrious  men  who  undertook  and  carried  out  the 
tremendous  work  of  independence  and  tliose  who,  for  about 
a  century,  have  continued  struggling  in  an  unequal  fight, 
tenacious  and  terrible,  with  the  aim  of  liberating  the  peo¬ 
ple  from  fanaticism  and  with  the  aim  of  democratizing  it, 
helping  lit  out  of  the  abyss  of  oppression  and  ignorance 
where  it  has  been  kept  by  the  clergy  and  the  potentates, 
the  so-called  white  aristrocrats  of  Mexico,  who  still  attempt 
to  keep  the  people  in  subjugation.  They  are  the  elements 
which  since  the  time  of  the  emancipation  are  known  in  our 
national  history  under  the  fatidic  name  of  Reactionary  Party. 

The  territory  which  at  present  constitutes  the  Mexican 
Republic,  was  conquered  and  colonized  about  four  cen¬ 
turies  ago  by  the  Spaniards  of  the  times  of  Charles  V  and 
Philip  II,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  subjects  of  the  most  back¬ 
ward,  absolutist  and  fanatical  of  all  the  monarchies  which 
existed  in  Europe. 

The  Papate  was  at  the  height  of  its  power  at  that  time. 
The  Roman  Pontiff  was  considered  as  the  king  of  kings 
and  the  unappallable  and  supreme  authority  in  the  world. 
The  power  of  the  Church  was  unlimited,  and  the  Inquisi- 


4 


tion  did  not  allow  even  a  peep  into  the  possibility  of  the 
day  dawning  in  which  the  catholic  nations  might  enjoy 
what  is  now  called  freedom  of  conscience.  The  friars  and 
the  priests  were  considered  as  envoys  and  representatives 
of  the  Divine  Power,  and  as  the  only  distributors  of  all 
spiritual  grace  and  welfare.  They,  with  the  kings  and  the 
nobility,  had  part  in  the  temporal  power,  and  with  them 
were  the  masters  and  absolute  and  indisputable  owners  of 
the  masses,  which  were  in  a  condition  of  stupor  through 
the  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages,  More  than  any  other 
nation,  the  Spanish  people  adapted  and  moulded  itself  to 
the  ideas  of  stupid  fanaticism  which  it  suited  the  royalty 
and  the  clergy  to  maintain,  because  the  nefast  influence 
of  Rome  was  at  work  in  spirits  already  accustomed  to  the 
fatalism  which  the  domination  of  the  Arabs  had  fostered 
in  Spain. 

This  nation,  fanatical  and  somber,  despotic  and  frown¬ 
ing,  accustomed  to  tradition  and  to  religious  and  political 
tyranny,  guided  by  audacious  adventurers,  sanguinary  and 
tilled  with  the  lust  of  gold,  and  by  lazy  friars,  ignorant  and 
full  of  cupidity,  was  appointed  by  the  hand  of  destiny  to 
conquer  and  colonize  America,  at  present  unduly  calling 
itself  Latin,  and  to  carry  the  light  of  European  culture  and 
Christianity  to  the  Aztec  people  whose  civilization,  really 
advanced  in  many  ways,  was  being  wrecked  on  the  breakers 
of  the  most  ferocious  despotism  and  the  most  ignoble 
idolatry. 

This  meant  the  assured  failure  of  the  Spanish  work  in 
America,  as  regards  its  political  and  sociological  aspect 
which  constitute  the  fundamental  principles  of  all  human 
organization,  since  History  teaches  that  when  the  conqueror 
has  the  same  capital  defects  that  mark  the  conquered,  these 
defects  are  added,  while  the  good  qualities  characteristic 
of  each,  are  deducted  and  slowly  degenerate  and  finally 
disappear. 

Closely  united  in  ideas  and  interests,  co-participants  in 
public  power  in  the  colony,  so  much  so  that  frequently 
bishops  and  arch-bishops  were  viceroys  or  governors  of 
provinces,  the  conquerors  and  the  clergy  helped  to  establish 
what,  to  the  shame  of  Spain  and  of  mankind,  is  known 
in  history  under  the  name  ,  of  Spanish  colonial  system,  a 
system  unique  in  the  world,  which  consists  simply  in  the 
division  amongst  the  Spaniards,  of  the  lands,  mines  and 
even  persons  of  the  Indians  who  were  forced  to  work  as 
beasts  in  the  terrible  “encomiendas”  of  the  conquerors,  to 
the  exclusive  benefit  of  the  Crown  and  the  Church. 

The  clergy,  tlierefore,  had  a  direct,  personal  interest  in 
keeping  the  natives  in  a  perpetual  state  of  blind  ignorance 
and  absolute  servitude,  since  these  were  essential  condi¬ 
tions  for  the  colonial  domination. 


5 


The  Spanish  clergy  not  only  did  nothing  to  raise  the  in¬ 
tellectual  and  moral  level  of  the  Indian,  about  whom  they 
had  long  and  heated  discussions  as  to  his  being  endowed 
with  a  soul,  a  fact  which  many  of  them  denied — but  they 
made  him  sink  deeper  into  the  ignominious  abyss  into 
which  he  had  been  pushed. 

The  civilization  work  by  means  of  the  conquest,  such  as 
was  understood  and  practised  by  the  other  people  of  Europe, 
did  not  exist  in  Spanish  America.  The  disgusting  abso¬ 
lutism  of  the  aborigine  monarchs  and  chieftains  was  re¬ 
placed  by  the  repugnant  and  brutal  despotism  of  the  Span¬ 
ish  government.  The  barbarous  lords  of  the  land,  cruel, 
sanguinary,  ferocious,  gave  way  to  conquerors  and  “en- 
comenderos,”  no  less  ferocious,  sanguinary  and  cruel.  The 
Mexican  priests  were  replaced  by  the  Spanish  friars,  as 
fanatic  as  the  former,  and  perhaps  more  ignorant.  The 
monstrous  Aztec  paganism  gave  way  to  the  fetichist  Catho¬ 
lic  polyteism.  The  Indian  temples  were  destroyed  in  order 
to  erect  on  their  ruins  other  temples  which  often  were 
built  with  the  materials,  still  bloody,  of  the  former.  The 
idols  of  the  natives  were  replaced  by  the  foreign  idols.  The 
terrible  Hitzilopochtli,  the  ferocious  god  of  war  of  the  Az¬ 
tecs,  merely  was  lowered  from  its  rank,  and  became  any 
Lord  of  Battles.  The  famous  god  of  water  was  thereafter 
some  vulgar  St.  Isidro,  of  Spanish  manufacture,  who  has 
charge  of  irrigating  the  fields  and  protecting  the  crops. 
Each  and  every  one  of  the  Mexican  gods  was  transformed 
into  innumerable  Christs,  virgins  and  saints,  disposed  to 
grant  the  same  favors  under  the  same  threats  through  the 
supplications  of  similar  priests,  but  requiring  richer  offer¬ 
ings.  If  there  was  any  difference,  this  consisted  in  the 
fact  that,  for  the  greater  facility  of  the  vile  exploitation, 
instead  of  having  one  sanctuary  for  each  god,  almost  all 
the  gods  were  gathered  in  each  temple.  If  any  improve¬ 
ment  was  attempted,  it  was  merely  to  replace  the  hard 
strong  Mexican  stone,  difficult  to  cut  and  to  chisel,  by  the 
easily  handled  paper  and  cotton  goods,  the  clay  and  the 
pastes  and  the  soft  woods  of  the  Spaniards.  If  any  pro¬ 
gress  was  made,  it  was  to  spread  among  the  Indians  the 
idea  of  the  Catholic  hell,  the  eternal  suffering  in  punishing 
crimes  committed  on  or  by  perishable  beings,  and  the  mon¬ 
strous  and  blasphemous  conception  of  the  devil,  that  is  to 
say,  a  spirit  of  eternal  and  infinite  evil,  created  and  tolerated 
by  a  God  of  infinite  goodness  and  inexhaustible  love,  to 
tempt  and  cause  the  spiritual  loss  of  man.  It  is  true  that 
they  suppressed  the  bloody  holocausts  of  the  Indian  divini- 
tie,  but  it  was  merely  to  inaugurate  their  own  persecutions, 
their  own  burnings,  their  atrocious  torments  and  the  hor¬ 
rible  cells  of  the  Holy  Inquisition. 


6 


As  to  the  social  state,  the  low  classes  gained  nothing, 
and  lost  much  under  the  Spanish  conquerors.  The  Indians 
status  grew  worse,  for  to  personal  slavery  was  added 
the  political  slavery  of  the  whole  race.  The  Indian  had 
practically  no  home,  and  was  considered  as  a  domestic 
l3east  and  not  as  an  individual,  being  deprived  even  of  that 
little  personality  which,  according  to  natural  principles,  cor¬ 
responds  to  man  by  the  mere  fact  of  existing.  The  Indian 
could  not  leave  the  “encomienda”  where  he  belonged  nor 
work  at  the  labor  he  preferred  or  felt  inclined  to.  He  was 
not  permitted  to  acquire  instruction,  even  if  he  so  desired, 
much  less  to  learn  an  art,  a  profession  or  even  a  trade  of 
those  exercised  by  the  Spaniards.  He  was  forbidden  to 
educate  his  children  because  these,  and  the  wife  he  had 
taken,  were  merely  the  miserable  companions  of  his  hate¬ 
ful  servitude. 

Instruction,  if  we  dare  call  it  by  this  name,  was  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  and  as  regards  the  Indian,  he  was 
taught  the  catechism,  not  Christian,  but  catholic,  and  this 
one  in  the  native  tongues,  which  missionaries  and  priests 
learned  for  that  purpose;  for  the  clergy  had  a  particular 
care  not  to  spread  the  Spanish  language  among  the  Indians 
in  order  to  keep  them  more  easily  and  securely  in  their 
condition  of  absolute  ignorance,  a  system  which  had  been 
continued  until  now,  in  several  regions  of  the  Republic. 
In  Yucatan,  for  example,  which  is  one  of  our  richest  states 
but  also  one  of  the  most  reactionary,  the  old  colonial  ways 
were  religiously  preserved  and  the  frightful  “encomiendas” 
of  the  old  conquerors  were  maintained  in  fact  until  the 
establishment  of  the  Constitutional  government  there.  Out 
of  a  population  of  300,000  more  than  half  are  pure  Indians 
who  are  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  Spanish  language  and  in 
regard  to  whom  all  effort  for  immediate  civilization  meets 
with  immense  difficulties.  The  natives  speak  a  language 
which  has  become  reduced  to  the  minimum  of  words,  abso¬ 
lutely  lacking  all  literature  and  consisting  only  of  the  words 
most  indispensable  to  carry  on  the  business  of  the  limited 
and  mechanical  life  which  they  have  carried  on  for  four 
centuries,  using  only  spoken  words  and  employing  in¬ 
terpreters,  who  were  men  often  sold  to  reaction.  These 
Indians,  therefore,  are  unahle  to  become  acquainted  with 
the  liberating  steps  taken  with  regard  to  themselves,  and  it 
is  an  impossible  task,  until  they  learn  to  read,  write  and 
speak  Spanish  in  which  they  are  being  instructed  at  present 
— to  express  to  them  in  an  exact  and  simple  manner,  with 
the  corresponding  explanations  and  advices,  the  knowledge 
of  the  law  and  their  rights  under  it.  Their  language,  how¬ 
ever  rich  it  may  have  been  in  ancient  times,  at  present, 
due  to  degeneration  and  the  slavery  of  the  race,  lacks  all 
technical  and  scientific  terms,  and  the  dictions  necessary 


7 


to  translate  modern  ideas  and  even  to  represent  the  most 
usual  things  of  our  epoch. 

The  creoles  and  the  few  mestizos  who  obtained  grace 
were  taught  to  read  and  write  in  a  very  deficient  way;  gen¬ 
erally,  only  the  creoles  were  taught  to  write.  Of  these 
classes,  the  individuals  who  desired  to  follow  a  profession, 
could  choose  only  that  of  arms  or  the  Church.  In  the 
former,  they  were  admitted  as  a  special  concession,  while 
in  the  latter  they  had  to  endure  the  humiliations  to  which 
the  high  Spanish  clergy  submitted  them,  and  which  they, 
in  their  turn,  inflicted  on  others. 

The  white  woman  was  maintained  in  a  condition  of 
mediaeval  restriction,  in  a  state  of  ignorance  and  fanaticism 
which  is  still  reflected  in  the  modern  Mexican  woman.  As 
a  reminiscence  of  the  Moorish  customs  implanted  in  Spain 
and  maintained  throughout  seven  centuries  of  Arab  dom¬ 
ination,  the  woman  remained  at  home,  guarded  by  the 
formidable  iron  gratings  which  still  call  the  attention  of  the 
foreigner  who  visits  Mexican  cities,  and  her  society  was 
reduced  to  intercourse  with  her  husband  and  her  children, 
her  immediate  servants  and  naturally,  her  confessor  and 
favorite  friars.  The  Spanish  saying:  “the  married  woman, 
must  be  broken-legged  and  stay  at  home”  contains  a  com¬ 
plete  historical  comment  and  paints  a  social  condition;  this 
proverb  was  pitilessly  practiced,  so  that  the  home  had  no 
opening  door  except  into  the  convent  or  the  vestry.  Sim¬ 
ilar  to  the  Aztecs  and  the  gentile  of  Greece  and  Rome,  each 
family  had  its  own  house  gods  and  in  each  house  was  a 
real  temple  more  or  less  spacious  according  to  the  resources 
of  the  dwellers.  The  long  idle  hours  of  the  woman  and 
the  children  were  consumed  in  the  worship  of  a  great 
variety  of  images,  representing  virgins  and  Christs  and 
saints,  and  even  the  animals  supposed  to  have  been  the 
companions  of  the  latter.  These  images  were  placed  on 
rich  altars  magnificently  ornamented  and  constantly  lighted 
by  means  of  small  oil  lamps  (another  relic  of  paganism) 
which  were  considered  sacred.  This  barbarous  and  anti- 
Christian  custom  was  introduced  and  favored  by  the 
Church  in  order  to  aflirih  and  maintain  its  domination; 
and  we  must  acknowledge  with  shame  that  it  is  still  prev¬ 
alent  in  Mexico  where  it  flourishes. 

Thus  the  colony  vegetated  for  almost  three  centuries, 
and  during  this  time  the  labor  and  suffering  of  the  Indi¬ 
ans  enriched  the  Crown,  the  Clergy  and  the  upper  class 
which  was  constituted  of  the  Spaniards  and  the  sons  of 
Spaniards.  Archbishops  and  bishops,  canons,  friars  and 
monks  of  all  known  orders  who  participated,  directly  or 
indirectly  in  the  government  of  the  colony,  were  supported 
by  public  funds  created  by  means  of  special  taxes,  and 
they  exercised  the  highest  offices  in  audiences,  councils  and 


8 


boards,  having  exclusive  charge  of  the  moral  and  intellectual 
direction  of  the  whole  country.  Spaniards  and  creoles, 
mestizos  and  Indians,  they  all  bowed  to  the  friars  and  from 
the  viceroy  down,  they  all  trembled  with  fright  under  the 
threat  of  excommunication  and  shuddered  at  the  idea  of 
being  persecuted  by  the  Inquisition.  The  weak  and  iso¬ 
lated  efforts  which  almost  always  were  made  with 
interested  ideas,  both  in  Europe  and  in  America  to 
improve  the  condition  of  the  natives,  failed  signal¬ 
ly,  and  served  only  to  provoke  terrible  reprisals 
on  the  part  of  the  clergy.  The  few  and  inefficient 
dispositions  which  favored  the  Indians,  and  which  were 
issued  by  some  of  the  Spanish  monarchs  upon  the  recom¬ 
mendation  of  the  celebrated  “Council  of  Indies,”  invariably 
met  with  a  firm  opposition  from  the  clergy,  and  even  in  the 
metropol  itself  gave  rise  to  bitter  intrigues  wherefrom  the 
Church  always  emerged  triumphant  and  stronger  than 
ever. 

Thus  the  New  Spain  was  surprised  by  the  war  of  Inde¬ 
pendence  in  the  United  States  and  that  bloody  and  glorious 
dawn  of  Liberty  called  the  French  Revolution.  These  two 
colossal  events  naturally  had  to  produce  a  commotion  in 
the  Spanish  colonies  in  America.  The  desire  to  become 
freed  from  the  mother-countiy  was  favored  by  the  state 
of  debility  to  which  the  Napoleonic  campaign  had  reduced 
Spain,  and  also  on  account  of  the  internal  strife  which 
rent  the  Peninsula,  and  the  tremendous  administrative  cor¬ 
ruption  which  marked  the  fatal  reign  of  the  fanatical  and 
imbecile  Ferdinand  VII. 

In  Mexico  as  well  as  in  the  other  colonies,  therefore,  there 
started  the  long  and  bloody  struggle  for  independence  which, 
b}^  a  very  particular  coincidence,  which  later  had  a  great 
influence  in  favor  of  the  clergy,  was  headed  by  two  un¬ 
known  Mexican  priests  who  belonged  to  the  low  clergy,  so 
rebutted  and  mistreated  by  the  high  Spanish  clergy. 

As  was  to  be  expected,  the  latter  Opposed  with  all  its 
strength  and  all  its  influence  the  accomplishment  of  emanci¬ 
pation;  disowned  and  excommunicated  the  insurgent  priests, 
and  when  they  at  last  fell  in  the  struggle,  degraded  them  pub¬ 
licly  and  ignominiously,  ordering  prayers  of  thanks  when 
the  chiefs  of  the  revolt  were  finally  sent  to  the  scaffold. 

The  war  of  independence  which  lasfed  eleven  years, 
would  have  lasted  many  years  more  if  the  Spaniards  and 
the  Clergy  itself  had  not  finally  understood  that  the  cause 
of  Spain  in  the  New  World  was  definitely  lost;  when  they 
decided  to  take  part  in  the  revolt  against  the  government  of 
the  metropoli  and  take  advantage  of  the  benefits  they  could 
derive  by  assuming  such  an  attitude  and  carefully  watching 
the  trend  of  the  new  order  of  things. 

This  is  how  that  transcendental  work  was  accomplished. 


9 


Thus  were  realized  the  daring  dreams  of  the  immortal 
Hidalgo  and  the  great  Morelos.  But  we  must  acknowledge 
that  the  movement  started  in  1810  was  more  of  a  political 
uprise  than  a  social  revolution. 

The  essential  object  of  the  enterprise  was  the  emancipa¬ 
tion  of  the  colony  from  the  rule  of  the  Spanish  crown,  as 
is  sufficiently  evidenced  by  the  circumstances  that  at  first 
it  was  not  considered  indispensable,  to  abolish  the  mon¬ 
archical  form  or  to  put  an  end  to  the  supremacy  of  the 
Spanish  element.  In  the  treaty  of  Cordoba  which  was 
celebrated  to  end  the  war  and  was  expressly  acknowledged 
in  the  Act  of  Independence,  it  was  stipulated  that  Mexico 
would  become  an  independent  sovereign  kingdom,  and  that 
its  government  would  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  that  same 
King  Ferdinand  VIF;  or  if  he  did  not  accept  or  resigned, 
it  would  be  left  in  the  hands  of  his  brother,  the  clerical 
and  sanguinary  Charles  of  Bourbon  or  any  other  of  the 
infants  of  the  same  house. 

The  insurgents  revolted  neither  against  the  influence  nor 
privileges  of  the  clergy;  on  the  contrary,  they  supported 
that  class  in  the  most  determined  manner.  Their  glorious 
flag  bore  the  image  of  the  Indian  virgin,  the  famous  Virgin 
of  Guadalupe.  In  1813,  the  Congress  of  Chilpancingo  had 
declared  that  “the  Mexican  nation  would  profess  and  recog¬ 
nize  no  other  religion  but  the  catholic  one,  and  would  never 
permit  or  tolerate  the  practice,  public  or  secret  of  any 
other.  Also  that  it  would  protect  with  all  its  energy  the 
profession  of  faith,  guard  the  preservation  of  its  purity 
and  dogmas  and  would  keep  the  regular  bodies  (the  secu¬ 
lars  and  the  clergy).  “In  the  constitution  called  Apant- 
zingan,”  issued  in  1814  by  the  Sovereign  Congress  of  the 
Insurgents  and  subscribed  by  the  priest  Morelos  and  other 
prominent  men  of  the  Independence  period,  the  Catholic 
religion  was  acknowledged  and  recognized  as  the  only  one 
to  be  practised  in  the  nation;  foreigners  who  did  not  pro¬ 
fess  the  Catholic  religion  were  not  permitted  to  become 
citizens,  and  it  was  resolved  that  citizenship  was  forfeited 
by  the  crimes  of  apostasy  and  heresy;  travellers,  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  protection  of  the  law  on  their  persons  and 
properties  were  bound  to  respect  Catholicism;  free  speech 
and  thought  was  forbidden  in  what  referred  to  attacks  on 
the  Dogma,  and  an  ordinance  was  set  for  the  opening  and 
closing  of  the  polls  by  the  celebration  of  masses  to  the 
Holy  Spirit  and  for  Tedeums;  it  was  ordered  that  all  ec¬ 
clesiastical  judges  be  maintained  in  their  respective  offices; 
and  finally  it  was  ordered  that  all  members  of  the  Supreme 
Government,  before  taking  the  oath  relative  to  their  re¬ 
solve  to  maintain  the  constitution  and  the  cause  of  Inde¬ 
pendence,  should  be  sworn  to  defend  even  at  the  cost  of 
their  blood,  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Roman  religion.  The  first 


10 


article  of  the  Plan  de  Iguala,  which  assured  the  triumph 
of  the  insurgents,  also  established  religious  intolerance  in 
favor  of  Catholicism,  expressly  declaring,  in  case  any  one 
dared  doubt  it,  that  the  clergy,  both  regular  and  secular, 
would  be  maintained  in  the  possession  of  its  properties 
and  privileges.  Lastly,  the  same  fierce  intolerance  was 
stamped  in  the  Republican  Constitution  of  1824,  and  in 
the  Constitutional  Bases  and  Laws  issued  in  the  years  1835 
and  1836.  The  Bases,  indeed,  state  that  the  Mexican  Na¬ 
tion  would  profess  or  protect  no  other  religion  but  the 
Catholic,  Apostolic  Roman  religion,  nor  would  it  permit 
the  profession  of  any  other.  And  the  Constitution  of  the 
year  ’36,  when  enumerating  the  obligations  of  Nationals, 
mentions  in  the  first  place,  that  of  “professing  the  religion 
of  his  country,”  and  expressly  preserved  ecclesiastic  privi¬ 
leges. 

During  several  years,  counting  from  the  fall  of  the  ephe- 
mere  empire  of  Agustin  de  Iturbide,  one  of  the  most  at¬ 
tractive  and  troublesome  figures  in  our  history,  and  doubt¬ 
less  the  most  difficult  on  which  to  pass  judgment,  Mexico 
was  merely  a  wide  field  for  sterile  political  struggles  ag¬ 
gravated  by  the  several  attempts  which  Spain  made  to 
reconquer  her  lost  possessions.  The  clergy  took  advantage 
of  this  situation  in  order  to  develop  its  resources  and  extend 
its  influence.  Bs  brazenness  reached  such  extremes  that  a 
certain  priest  applied  to  the  government  for  authorization 
which  was  denied  him — to  have  recourse  to  whipping  in 
order  to  compel  his  parishioners  to  obey  and  serve  him ! 

But  the  good  seed  which  the  North-American  and  the 
French  revolutions  had  planted  in  the  conscience  of  peo¬ 
ple  had  begun  to  sprout.  The  Mexican  Liberal  Party,  which 
was  the  work  of  chosen  spirits  who  desired  to  obtain  the 
development  of  new  ideals  for  their  countiy  began  to  crys¬ 
tallize,  slowly  but  surely.  B  became  understood  that  the 
real  obstacle  for  the  progress  and  development  of  the  Na¬ 
tion  and  the  education  of  the  peoples  was  to  be  found  in 
the  reactionary  party,  the  one  constituted  of  the  clergy  and 
the  so-called  aristocracy;  and  the  struggle  between  the 
the  retrogrades  and  the  men  who  aspired  to  secure  great¬ 
ness  for  their  country  began  in  earnest  and  the  country 
was  divided  into  two  camps:  the  reactionaries — at  the  be¬ 
ginning  opposed  to  emancipation,  then  imperialists  with 
Iturbide,  afterwards  centralists,  the  same  who  later  sup¬ 
ported  dictatorship  with  Santa-Anna— always  clericals  and 
natural  protectors  of  the  clergy;  and  the  liberal  party, 
which  wanted  to  establish  a  Federal  Republic  similar  to 
the  North-American  one,  to  spread  education  among  the 
people,  to  give  it  ample  political  and  social  liberty,  and 
diminish  the  power  of  the  Church  by  depriving  it  of  its 
privileges  and  forbidding  its  participation. 


11 


No  true  Mexican  is  desirous  of  remembering  the  extremes 
of  empoverishment  and  degradation  reached  by  the  coun¬ 
try  under  Antonio  Lopez  de  Santa-Anna  the  most  hateful 
of  tyrants,  a  tragic  clown  who  in  his  speeches  and  mani¬ 
festos  compared  himself  to  Cincinnatus  and  Washington 
while  he  called  himself  “Alteza  Serenisima”  and  plunged 
a  knife  into  the  breast  of  the  mother-country.  None  of  us 
desires  to  bring  to  mind  the  fact  that  the  vanity,  ambition, 
cupidity  and  fanaticism  of  this  fatidic  man,  the  powerful 
chief  of  the  reactionaries,  was  the  cause,  first  of  the  re¬ 
bellion  in  Texas,  and  then  of  the  unjust  and  unequal  war 
with  the  United  States  by  which  Mexico  lost  almost  one 
half  of  its  territory. 

This  terrible  disaster  occasioned  by  the  dictatorship  and 
the  clergy,  opened  many  eyes,  until  then  closed,  and  neces¬ 
sarily  caused  the  downfall  of  Santa-Anna  and  the  loss  of 
prestige  of  his  perverse  politics.  The  revolution  started. 
Sword  in  hand,  the  liberal  party  succeeded  in  taking  pos¬ 
session  of  the  power,  and  the  bitter  and  bloody  struggle  against 
clericalism  began  with  the  dispossession  of  property  and  the 
issuance  of  the  celebrated  Constitution  of  ’57,  copied  from  the 
American  constitution,  and  by  means  of  which  the  Federal 
Republic  was  instituted,  consecrating  freedom  of  thought, 
of  press,  of  work  and  of  instruction;  proclaiming  all  the 
other  rights  of  man,  suppressing  privileges,  declaring  all 
men  equal  before  the  law,  and  repressing  the  ambition  and 
rapacity  of  the  clergy  by  the  declaration  that  ecclesiastical 
corporations  are  incapable  to  administer  or  acquire  real 
estate,  except  those  buildings  directly  and  immediately 
destined  to  the  service  and  object  of  their  institutions. 

The  reactionary  party  turned  against  these  laws  furious¬ 
ly  and  at  the  cry  of  '‘religion  y  fiieros”  (religion  and  privi¬ 
leges)  began  the  terrible  civil  struggle  called  Reform  War, 
which  for  years  steeped  the  soil  of  the  republic  in  blood 
and  almost  caused  the  loss  of  the  Mexican  nationality.  The 
clericals,  overcome  on  the  battlefield,  did  not  hesitate  to 
search  Europe  for  a  scepter  to  hold  sway  over  the  catholic 
empire  they  had  planned  to  establish  in  Mexico.  All  the 
world  knows  how  that  incomparable  and  glorious  epoch 
ended,  in  which  the  liberal  party  and  the  genius  of  Juarez 
saved  the  mother  country  against  the  united  efforts  of  the 
Mexican  traitors  and  the  troops  of  Napoleon  the  Small. 

During  this  struggle,  Juarez,  Ocampo  and  the  brothers 
Lerdo  de  Tejada  dealt  to  clericalism  the  tremendous  blows 
which  were  embodied  in  the  laws  which  are  known  in  Mexi¬ 
can  history  under  the  significant  name  of  Laws  of  Reform; 
the  separation  of  the  Church  and  the  State  was  decreed, 
as  well  as  the  nationalization  of  the  clerical  property;  that 
is  to  say,  it  was  ordered  that  all  the  property  owned  in  the 
republic  by  the  regular  and  secular  clergy,  reverted  to  the 


12 


nation;  all  religious  orders  were  suppressed  and  the  erec¬ 
tion  or  institution  of  new  convents  was  forbidden;  a  law  was 
decreed  relative  to  the  civil  status  of  persons,  depriving 
the  Church  of  the  faculty  it  had  usurped,  of  carrying  the 
registers  of  births,  marriages  and  death,  since  this  work 
evidently  belonged  to  the  State.  All  intervention  of  the 
Church  ceased  in  the  cemeteries  and  churchyards,  where 
burial  was  often  denied  to  those  who  had  fought  against 
the  abuses  of  the  clergy;  one  specific  case  was  when  this 
denial  was  applied  to  the  bodies  of  the  men  who  had 
signed  the  Constitution  of  1857.  The  liens  between  the 
national  and  pontifical  governments  were  broken;  it  was 
settled  that  marriage  was  only  a  civil  contract  and  that 
only  the  unions  performed  according  to  law  and  before 
those  officials  specially  designed  for  it  by  the  republic,  would 
be  valid  before  the  law  and  create  legal  rights  and  obliga¬ 
tions;  religious  holidays  ceased  to  be  national  or  state  holi¬ 
days;  and  an  ordinance  was  adopted  forbidding  the  civil 
authorities  as  such  and  the  troops  in  formation,  to  attend 
temples  or  religious  ceremonies;  freedom  of  cults  was  pro¬ 
claimed;  the  authority  of  religion  and  of  priests  was  de¬ 
clared  to  be  merely  spiritual  and  that  in  the  civil  order 
there  could  be  no  obligation,  no  coercion  or  penalties  for 
acts,  misdemeanors  or  crimes  of  a  purely  religious  order. 
Warning  was  given  that  bulls,  rescripts,  pastoral  letters,  ser¬ 
mons,  etc.,  on  no  account  would  be  tolerated;  no  attack 
against  order  or  peace,  morality,  private  life  or  the  rights 
of  a  third  party  would  be  tolerated  on  any  account  in  any 
clerical  decree,  bulls,  rescripts,  pastoral  letters,  sermons, 
etc.  The  right  of  enforcement  was  denied  to  the  Church 
and  also  the  right  to  give  refuge  within  temples.  It  was 
also  declared  that  oath  and  its  retraction  were  not  of  the 
incumbence  of  the  law  nor  could  have  any  legal  effect; 
and  oath  was  substituted  with  the  promise  to  tell  the  truth 
and  comply  with  the  law;  it  was  ordered  that  religious 
acts  be  confined  to  the  interior  of  churches  and  that  out¬ 
side  of  them  the  priests  were  not  authorized  to  wear  special 
clothes  nor  any  distinctive  signs  of  their  ministry.  It  was 
no  longer  permitted  that  spiritual  directors  be  appointed 
heirs;  neither  was  it  permitted  to  collect  alms  for  religious 
objects  unless  duly  authorized  by  the  civil  authorities,  and 
with  the  understanding  that  contributions  should  always  be 
voluntary  and  not  extorted  by  coercion.  All  special  treat¬ 
ment  of  priests  and  religious  corporations  was  suppressed; 
the  ringing  of  bells  was  regulated  by  the  police;  hospitals 
and  beneficence  houses  were  placed  under  civil  aufhority 
instead  of  allowing  the  clergy  to  have  absolute  command 
of  them;  the  nuns  were  ordered  out  of  the  convents  and 
all  women  convents  were  definitely  closed  and  all  religious 
teaching  as  well  as  all  religious  ceremonies  were  banished 

13 

V 


from  official  schools;  all  these  decrees  were,  during  the 
years  1873  and  1874,  when  Sebastian  Lerdo  de  Tejada  was 
president  of  the  republic,  the  successor  of  Juarez — con¬ 
densed  into  a  law  and  sanctioned  as  supreme  laws  of  the 
republic  by  the  Congress  of  the  Union,  and  it  was  added 
in  them  that  the  churches  would  be  under  the  direct  con¬ 
trol  of  the  Nation  which  would  permit  the  priests  to  make 
use  of  them,  but  this,  only  until  such  time  as  the  govern¬ 
ment  should  see  fit  to  decree  the  final  consolidation  of  the 
property. 

But  the  task  of  the  great  Mexican  liberals  was  too  gigantic 
to  be  consummated  in  one  generation. 

It  was  an  attack  against  ignorance  and  secular  fanaticism 
of  a  whole  nation,  and  against  a  power  which  for  centuries 
had  absolutely  dominated  the  country,  a  power  which  is 
still  alive;'  for  although  the  Constitution  of  ’57  and  the  Laws 
of  Reform  signified  terrible  blows  against  the  monster  who 
reacted,  they  were  not  sufficient  to  overturn  it,  much  less 
to  annihilate  it. 

The  very  spirit  of  liberalism  which  animated  these  laws 
was  their  worst  enemy,  for  although  they  deprived  the 
Church  of  official  power  and  placed  serious  difficulties  of 
form  in  the  way  of  the  Church,  still,  they  allowed  it,  under 
constitutional  guaranties,  to  pursue  its  somber  labor  of  ob¬ 
scurantism  and  retrogradation. 

However,  if  the  Laws  of  Reform  had  been  issued  for  an 
educated,  cultured  people,  one  respecting  the  law,  conscious 
of  its  rights  and  acts;  or  if  at  least,  the  laws  would  have 
been  applied  strictly  by  honest  authorities,  zealous  of  ful¬ 
filling  their  duty,  the  slow  work  of  years  would  have  ac¬ 
customed  the  people  to  such  beautiful  practices  and  would 
have  insured  for  the  Mexicans  the  realization  of  the  glori¬ 
ous  dreams  of  those  high  thinkers,  who  endowed  their 
mother-country,  more  than  fifty  years  ago,  with  a  legisla¬ 
tion  which  in  a  very  incomplete  manner,  was  recently  copied 
by  France,  and  which  is  still  to  be  copied  by  other  people 
such  as  Spain,  Italy  and  the  Central  and  South  American 
republics  which  still  moan  under  the  heavy  yoke  of  cleri¬ 
calism. 

But  history,  which  at  all  times  and  in  all  countries  teaches 
us  invariably  that  the  best  legislations  when  they  are  placed 
very  high  above  the  intellectual  and  moral  level  of  the  multi¬ 
tudes  and  does  not  care,  either,  to  raise  such  a  level,  ac¬ 
tively  and  strenuously,  they  stumble,  when  carried  into 
practice,  against  insuperable  difficulties.  If  nature  does  not 
go  in  jumps  and  leaps  when  it  is  a  question  of  the  physi¬ 
cal  evolution  of  beings,  it  does  act  so  either  when  it  is  a 
question  of  the  social  or  psychological  evolution  of  peoples. 
Its  work,  its  great  work  is  carried  on  slowly  in  all  fields. 


14 


line  by  line,  step  by  step,  drop  by  drop.  The  only  thing 
which  will  resist  the  lash  of  the  tempest  and  the  weight  of 
his  ideas,  is  to  follow  the  earth,  weed  it  unceasingly,  culti¬ 
vate  it  carefully,  and  resign  himself,  without  losing  faith 
or  enthusiasm,  to  wait  until  the  small  sprout  becomes  a 
plant  and  finally  develops  into  a  budding  bush,  and  to  en¬ 
tertain  the  hope  that  the  latter  will  become  a  strong  big  tree 
which  will  resist  the  lash  of  the  tempest  and  the  weight  of 
the  centuries.  ^ 

This  is  what  should  have  been  done  in  Mexico.  For  de¬ 
spite  the  declamations  of  newspapers  and  demagogues,  so 
abundant  in  Spanish  America,  the  Mexican  people  was  not 
prepared  to  understand  nor  ready  to  take  advantage  of  all 
those  conquests  which  are  almost  at  the  summit  of  social 
evolution,  in  so  far  as  can  be  observed  from  the  depths 
of  the  dark  valley  in  which  we  are  still  groping.  It  was 
necessary  to  prepare  the  people,  to  modify  it,  it  was  neces¬ 
sary  to  reiterate  the  new  truths  to  it.  It  was  necessary  to 
guide  each  of  its  steps,  lighting  them  incessantly  with  the 
light  of  reason;  it  was  indispensable  to  drag  it  away  with 
facts  and  not  by  mere  words,  from  the  claws  of  fanaticism 
and  ignorance. 

If  a  man’s  behavior  would  be  considered  absurd  if  he 
voluntarily  exposed  his  young  child  to  deathly  perils  claim¬ 
ing  that  he  had  instructed  him  fully  and  given  him  valuable 
and  wise  advice,  in  the  same  way  it  is  absurd  to  expect  the 
mass  of  the  people  to  free  itself  of  fanaticism  while  still 
being  under  the  influence  of  the  clergy,  while  the  govern¬ 
ment  of  the  republic  merely  disowned  and  despised  that 
institution.  It  was  impossible  to  close  the  eyes  of  the  Mexi¬ 
can  so  that  he  would  not  see  any  idols,  watch  any  soutans, 
read  any  clerical  literature;  it  was  impossible  to  plug  his 
ears  so  that  he  would  not  hear  any  more  sermons,  salves, 
rogatives,  bells;  nor  was  it  possible  to  stiffen  his  lips  so 
that  he  place  no  more  kisses  on  the  feet  of  saints,  or  the 
dirty  hands  of  sinners  or  on  the  contaminated  ornaments 
of  priests  and  images;  no  one  could  nail  his  legs  so  that  he 
should  not  bend  the  knee  before  the  so-called  ministers  of 
the  Divine  Power  or  the  evil  representations  of  the  Supreme 
Being;  no  one  could  snatch  his  pocket-book  to  prevent  him 
from  delivering  his  money  to  priests.  But  it  was  possible 
to  silence  bells,  burn  books,  stop  sermons,  place  idols  out  of 
the  sight  and  the  lips  of  the  Mexican,  forbid  that  venera¬ 
tion  of  one  man  for  another,  prevent  those  undue  worship¬ 
pings,  and  those  spoliations.  Unhappily,  that  is  not  what 
was  done.  Outside  of  the  principal  centres  (and  not  in  all 
of  them)  where  liberal  agrupations  existed  ready  to  de¬ 
mand  the  fulfillment  of  the  Reform  Laws,  the  authorities 
did  not  exact  compliance  with  them,  and  tolerated  and  con¬ 
sented  to  hundreds  of  daily  transgressions  on  the  part  of 


15 


the  clergy.  Proof  of  this  slackness  may  be  had  in  the 
numerous  and  frequent  circulars  issued  by  the  Federal 
Government,  wherein,  invoking  patriotism,  it  requested  and 
exhorted  the  State  governors  not  to  permit  that  the  prize 
won  at  the  cost  of  so  much  blood  and  suffering,  be  snatched 
from  their  hands  and  to  have  the  Laws  of  Reform  obeyed 
in  full.  Yes;  the  Federal  Government  had  to  make  this 
request,  for  unfortunately,  as  it  usually  happens  in  the 
hour  of  triumph,  many  reactionaries,  many  traitors  glided 
into  the  republican  liberal  ranks,  and  secured  civil  employ¬ 
ment,  and  under  mental  restriction,  protested  the  fulfillment 
of  the  laws  of  the  Republic,  while  they  were  the  first  to 
disregard  and  violate  them,  in  person  and  through  their 
families. 

When  the  gigantic  work  had  just  started,  when  the  labor 
of  reconstructing  a  country,  ruined  and  devastated  by  sixty- 
six  years  of  bloody  struggle,  sixty-six  years  during  which 
the  Independence  War,  the  second  war  against  Spain,  the 
war  with  the  United  States,  the  war  of  Reform,  the  war 
against  France  and  the  Empire  had  succeeded  each  other, 
mixed  with  innumerable  civil  struggles;  when  the  govern¬ 
ment  toiled  to  solve  the  serious  economic  problems,  as  the 
inevitable  corollary  of  such  deep  and  lengthy  perturbations, 
there  appeared  on  the  bloody  stage  of  national  politics  the 
somber  figure  of  the  sinister  man  in  whose  hands  the  des¬ 
tiny  of  Mexico  was  nearly  reversed,  and  who  almost  made 
useless  the  incessant  and  mortal  struggle  which  had  been 
carried  on  for  almost  two-thirds  of  a  century:  that  man 
was  Porfirio  Diaz. 

By  his  infidelities  and  by  his  treasons,  he  had  impeded 
the  great  work  of  Juarez  and  embittered  the  last  years  of 
the  noble  old  man;  his  ambition,  his  hypocrisy  and  his  secret 
alliance  with  the  men  of  the  reactionary  party  caused  the 
fall  of  Sebastian  Lerdo  de  Tejada,  that  eminent  statician, 
worthy  successor  of  the  Benemerito  de  las  Americas,  the 
last  representative  of  the  great  Mexican  liberals,  he  who 
went  to  hide  his  shame  and  that  of  all  his  race,  until  he 
died,  in  the  ample  bosom  of  the  free  American  nation. 

Once  porfirio  Diaz  became  enthroned  in  power  by  means 
of  violence  and  deceit,  and  thanks  to  the  traditional 
“cuartelazo”  which  in  Spanish  American  substituted  the 
“por  gracia  de  Dois”  (by  the  grace  of  God)  of  the  European 
monarchs,  he  knew  how  to  keep  himself  in  by  means  of 
the  paid  bayonets  of  a  corrupted  federal  army,  ready  to 
draAV  in  blood,  as  he  often  did,  all  start  of  protest,  all  at¬ 
tempt  at  liberation. 

We  are  not  going  to  make  here  the  history  or  the  criticism 
of  the  dictatorship  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  for  we  would  then  be 
outside  our  subject,  which  is  merely  to  point  out  through 
the  history  of  Mexico,  the  work  of  the  clerical  party  and 


16 


the  motives  for  the  serious  campaign  started  against  it  by 
the  Constitutionalism.  We  will  say  no  more  about  the 
man  who  is  now  a  corpse,  the  man  who  had  his  days  of 
glory,  who  also  shed  his  blood  for  liberty,  but  who  was 
blinded  by  ambition  and  dared  to  place  his  own  interest 
before  that  of  the  Mother-country.  His  long  journey 
through  our  national  history  has  at  least  served 
to  show  the  capabilities  of  the  Mexican  people: 
how  easily  it  adapts  itself  to  civilization,  how,  even 
in  the  middle  of  the  asphyxiating  moral  atmosphere  in  which 
it  breathed,  it  developed  material  capabilites  and  faculties 
really  surprising;  how  rapidly  it  became  disciplined  even 
under  the  dictatorship,  and  how  easily  it  could  have  been 
led  through  the  path  of  real  progress  and  true  freedom. 

Diaz  v^as  well  aware  of  the  power  of  capital  and  of  the 
clergy,  and  all  his  policy  in  order  to  perpetuate  himself  in 
power,  aimed  to  obtain,  first  the  sympathy,  and  afterwards 
the  frank,  decided,  manifest  co-operation  of  the  clergy  and 
the  “aristocracy,”  the  two  reactionary  elements  in  Mex¬ 
ico. 

Despite  all  assertions  to  the  contrary,  he  comes  from  the 
lowest  ranks  of  the  middle  class,  and  by  means  of  alliances, 
he  became  a  member  of  the  most  opulent  and  reactionary 
families  of  the  metropolis,  and  forgetting  his  countrymen, 
the  indomitable  Oaxaca  Indians,  at  whose  head  he  had  gone 
to  triumph,  he  employed  years  and  years  in  trying  to  be¬ 
come  an  “aristocrat”  to  divine  the  secret  of  good  manners, 
in  the  sumptuous  functions,  in  the  palatial  homes  of  the  rich¬ 
est  families  or  in  the  beautiful  halls  of  Chapultepec,  or  in 
the  superb  Hall  of  Embassadors  or  in  the  magnificent  halls 
of  the  Jockey  Club. 

In  the  pursuit  of  an  odious  “caciquismo,”  with  which  he 
substituted  the  federal  republican  regime,  proclaimed  by  a 
constitution  which  existed  in  name  only,  he  reserved  all 
the  high  posts  for  his  adherents,  the  rich,  fanatical  Mexi¬ 
cans,  and  systematically  and  implacably  drove  from  the 
administration  all  the  middle  class,  the  liberal  class  of  Mex¬ 
ico  which  had  contributed  with  the  endeavour  of  its  intel¬ 
ligence  and  with  its  blood  to  the  restoration  of  the  Republic; 
the  class  which  invariably  had  marched  at  the  front  in  all 
the  enterprises  of  progress  and  liberty  which  have  been 
enacted  in  Mexico. 

Porfirio  Diaz’  work  of  conquest  of  the  clergy  was  more 
rapid  and  easier  because  he  was  working  on  a  class  which 
has  always  been  a  faithful  partisan  of  dicatorships;  it 
was  enough  for  him  to  begin  what  is  known  by  the  name 
of  Policij  of  Conciliation,  and  which  at  the  bottom  was 
merely  the  violent  revocation  of  almost  all  the  Laws  of 
Reform,  all  the  measures  conquered  and  sanctified  by  the 
blood  of  so  many  Mexicans,  laws  enacted  in  order  to  re- 


17 


strict  the  power  of  the  clergy  and  to  prevent  any  enterprise 
of  a  reactionary  nature. 

Traitors  who,  sword  in  hand,  had  supported  the  empire 
of  Maximillian  and  the  banner  of  Religion  and  Privileges, 
were  called  to  the  highest  offices  in  the  government  of  the 
Republic,  either  in  the  army,  in  the  government  of  the 
States,  the  Congress  and  the  Senate  or  in  the  diplomatic 
service,  and  even  in  the  cabinet  itself. 

The  Laws  of  Reform  only  lived  the  solitary  life  of  files 
and  libraries,  and  nobody  wanted  to  remember  when  or  why 
or  wherefore  or  by  whom  they  had  been  issued,  unless  it 
was  to  ask  that  they  be  revoked. 

Despite  the  ordinances  which  prohibit  the  establishment 
of  monastic  orders  in  the  Republic,  the  country  again  be¬ 
came  ridden  with  monks’  and  nuns’  convents,  which  under 
pretext  of  founding  schools  and  establishing  charity  insti¬ 
tutions,  abounded  in  every  city.  On  streets  and  squares 
one  could  see  the  black  soutanos  of  the  clergy;  public  pro¬ 
cessions  and  all  kinds  of  religious  ceremonies  were  held 
everywhere,  especially  in  small  cities,  where  more  than  any¬ 
where  else  it  would  have  been  necessary  to  repress  them. 

The  clergy  took  deliberate  hold  of  instruction,  not  only 
the  primary  grades,  but  high  and  professional  schools,  while 
public  government  schools  closed  day  by  day  or  were  poorly 
attended  on  account  the  scarcity  of  teachers  due  to  the 
miserable  salaries,  and  the  want  of  books  and  other  school 
material,  or  merely  on  account  of  the  absence  of  pupils 
who  were  not  compelled  by  the  authorities  to  attend  official 
schools;  the  clergy  multiplied  its  schools,  seminaries  and 
colleges,  spreading  its  pernicious  doctrines  everywhere, 
especially  amongst  the  children  of  the  higher  classes,  and 
counting  among  their  pupils  the  children  of  the  highest 
official  authorities.  In  regard  to  the  children  of  the  mes¬ 
tizos  and  Indians,  of  whom  the  Church  could  expect  noth¬ 
ing,  it  was  convenient  to  maintain  them  in  ignorance,  there¬ 
fore,  schools  were  closed  for  them,  or  at  best,  they  were 
instructed  only  in  the  catechism,  in  separate  halls,  where 
they  entered  through  special  doors,  because  on  earth  as  in 
heaven,  the  clergy  has  thus  understood  equality  and  de¬ 
mocracy. 

In  its  text  books,  in  the  pulpit,  in  its  publications,  the 
clergy  brazenly  attacked,  not  only  the  ideas  contrary  to 
them,  but  also  the  liberal  laws  the  revocation  of  which  it 
demanded  insistently,  and  even  went  so  far  as  to  insult  and 
ridicule  our  national  heroes,  and  denaturing  or  omitting 
historical  facts  in  our  history. 

Supported  and  served  by  the  servile  advocates  of  the 
conciliating  “cientifcismo,”  and  counting  upon  the  indif¬ 
ference,  complacency  and  help  of  reactionary  and  venal 


18 


authorities  and  judges,  the  clericals  distorted  and  misin¬ 
terpreted  laws  and  prohibitions,  thus  killing  the  spirit  of 
the  Reform. 

By  means  of  all  kinds  of  subterfuges,  and  notwithstand¬ 
ing  the  prohibition  imposed  on  religious  corporations  to 
possess  and  administer  real  estate  or  revenue  capital,  they 
began  to  monopolize  a  number  of  valuable  rural  and  city 
properties,  and  large  amounts  of  money  which  appeared 
to  be  the  personal  property  of  archbishops  and  bishops 
or  fanatical  wealthy  individuals,  the  latter  making  a  will 
in  favor  of  the  former;  properties  and  capitals  which  by 
means  of  their  parties,  and  with  the  complacent  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  authorities,  were  leased  or  rented  usuriously, 
or  employed  in  shameful  banking  or  bursatile  combina¬ 
tions. 

Temples,  sanctuaries  and  oratories  multiplied,  and  at¬ 
tached  to  the  national  churches,  sumptuous  chapels  and 
magnificent  residences  were  erected,  many  times  paid  for 
with  public  funds;  the  higher  clergy  living  like  princes, 
with  carriages,  automobiles  and  lackeys. 

The  authorities,  from  the  President  down  boasted  of  the 
good  terms  on  whictL  th^  lived  with  the  clergy,  and  the 
clergy  boasted  of  its  friendship  with  the  authorities,  and  an 
interchange  of  calls  was  established  between  vestries  and 
official  palaces. 

As  if  the  diocesi  already  existant  were  not  sufficient,  new 
ones  were  created,  thus  ridding  the  republic  with  arch¬ 
bishops  and  bishops;  and  the  number  of  brotherhoods,  . 
fraternities,  congregations  and  religious  societies,  pious 
work  boards,  and  other  associations  of  which  the  clergy 
makes  use  to  carry  on  its  propaganda,  were  prodigiously 
increased. 

Sensing  a  remote  peril  in  the  natives  of  the  country,  and 
following  in  this  the  past  experience  they  had  had,  the 
Church  excluded  the  Mexicans  from  seminaries  and  all  ec¬ 
clesiastical  employments,  offices  and  dignities.  The  greater 
majority  of  the  alumni  in  the  seminaries,  was  composed 
-  of  boys  brought  from  Spain  to  Mexico  in  order  to  “instruct 
or  educate”  tliein  and  convert  them  in  some  future  day  into 
princes  of  the  Mexican  church.  All  the  clergy,  high  and 
low,  with  very  few  exceptions,  (in  which  there  were  but 
few  mestizos  and  Indians)  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Span¬ 
iards,  many  of  them  absolutely  illiterate,  and  whom  pub¬ 
lic  opinion  pointed  out  as  jail-birds,  ex-grocers  or  ex-bull¬ 
fighters,  in  one  word,  members  of  the  pestiferous  clerical 
rabble  which  the  catholic  Spain  itself  had  driven  from 
its  soil. 

The  bishops  called  and  gave  hearty  welcome  to  friars 
and  priests  expelled  not  only  from  Spain  but  also  from 


19 


France,  who  under  the  name  of  Marists  and  other  suspicious 
names  swarmed  into  Mexico,  the  new  land  of  promise, 
wherein  they  could  idle  in  luxury  and  steal  under  the  name 
of  religion,  and  in  that  name  also  corrupt  men,  women  and 
children. 

The  numerous  crimes  of  the  soutane  people  went  unpun¬ 
ished;  for  while  in  the  United  States  it  is  easy  to  send  to 
the  electric  chair  any  reverend  who  is  a  criminal,  in  the 
History  of  Mexico  no  case  is  registered  wherein  a  priest 
has  been  condemned  even  to  life  imprisonment.  When  and 
wherever  they  pleased  they  could  kill,  steal  and  abuse.  If 
the  misdemeanor  was  of  small  importance  or  executed  in 
azima  vili,  the  matter  was  forgotten;  but  if  it  was  an  enor- 
•  mous  crime  either  in  its  nature  or  on  account  of  the  vic¬ 
tim,  then  the  criminal  was  sent  out  of  the  diocesis  or  out  of 
the  national  territorv,  in  accordance  with  the  authorities 
and  with  money  which  sometimes  the  parishioners  them¬ 
selves,  occasionally  even  the  offended  parties  themselves, 
furnished,  in  order  that  the  good  name  of  the  Church  should 
not  suffer. 

The  tithes  were  re-established  in  fact,  by  means  of  direct 
petitions  which  under  the  pretext  of  pious  works  to  be  made 
were  addressed  in  writing  to  rich  individuals,  or  by  means 
of  almoners  who  went  from  house  to  house,  asking  financial 
help  for  the  reconstruction  of  such  and  such  a  temple,  or 
for  this  or  that  novain;  and  those  who  refused  were 
ostracized. 

Under  pretext  of  exerting  the  rights  guaranteed  by  the 
Constitution,  which  they  never  respected,  the  reactionaries 
employed  the  authorities  for  preventing,  forbidding,  dis¬ 
solving  and  punishing  officially  any  campaign,  any  propa¬ 
ganda,  any  manifestation,  any  writing  against  clericalism; 
while  they,  in  their  large  diaries,  of  which  they  had  also 
taken  possession,  printed  insults,  attacks  against  the  “en¬ 
emies  of  the  faith,”  and  defamed  and  publicly  calumniated 
the  liberals,  attacking  them  in  their  honor,  and  asking  that 
bread  and  salt  be  denied  to  them,  which  really  occurred, 
for  to  express  anti-catholic  ideas  was  enough  to  be  placed 
outside  of  society.  The  non-catholic  professionals  starved, 
deprived  of  clients  and  help.  Those  who  had  the  courage 
of  not  having  baptism  administered  to  their  children  or  of 
omitting  the  religious  ceremony  of  marriage,  were  looked 
upon  with  public  contempt,  considered  as  if  they  lived  in 
concubinage  and  condemned  to  perpetual  isolation. 

The  clergy  ratified  its  hateful  pact  with  the  large  land¬ 
holders,  successors  in  spirit  if  not  in  race,  of  the  heartless 
“encomenderos”  of  the  time  of  the  conquest,  in  order  to 
rivet  the  chains  which  held  the  people  and  continue  hold¬ 
ing  it  in  slavery,  which,  in  spite  of  anything  stated  to  the 


20 


contrary,  existed  in  fact  in  Yucatan  in  an  open  and  disgust¬ 
ing  manner.  In  the  chapels  installed  in  the  farms  and 
ranches,  there  took  place  periodical  celebrations  of  masses 
and  other  ceremonies,  liberally  paid  for,  by  the  owners, 
with  the  object  of  “catequizar”  the  Indians,  who  were  threat¬ 
ened  with  eternal  torments  if  they  disobeyed  their  owners 
or  tried  to  leave  the  farms,  an  act  of  impossible  accomplish¬ 
ment,  since  the  authorities,  by  means  of  public  troops  under¬ 
took  to  pursue  and  even  hunt  as  beasts  the  unhappy  beings 
who  tried  to  shake  the  yoke,  and  who  when  caught  were 
thrown  into  inquisitorial  cells,  in  stocks,  after  having  been 
whipped  barbarously;  a  custom  which  was  common  in 
Yucatan,  until  about  the  end  of  the  year  1914. 

With  the  complacency  of  the  government,  the  clericals 
gave  a  final  blow  to  the  mother-country,  and  before  the 
whole  world  condemned  the  work  of  the  Republic  in  Mexico, 
erecting  on  the  historical  hill  of  “Las  Campanas,”  on  the 
same  site  where  the  Nation,  in  1867,  had  executed  those 
who  had  attempted  to  murder  her,  the  chapel  called  the 
Expiation  to  make  amends  to  the  Lord  for  the  offense 
against  him  made  by  republican  soldiers  when  they  marched 
against  the  clergy  and  against  the  empire  of  Maximillian; 
a  chapel  which,  we  understand,  is  still  waiting  to  be  de¬ 
molished  by  the  constitutionalist  pick. 

The  clericals  made  idleness  the  national  Mexican  custom, 
promoting  the  renewal  of  the  old  practice  of  having  civil 
holidays  at  the  same  time  as  the  religious  ones.  These 
were  distributed  in  such  way  that  all  cities,  boroughs, 
towns,  villages,  farms,  etc.,  in  each  state,  celebrated  them, 
either  simultaneously  or  in  turn,  so  that  the  holidays  ex¬ 
tended  through  the  whole  year,  and  there  were  fairs  and 
other  celebrations  with  the  inevitable  drunkenness,  bull¬ 
fights  and  other  barbarous  amusements.  During  these 
festivities,  each  association  or  group  of  workingmen,  la¬ 
borers,  artisans,  merchants,  farmers,  students  and  profes¬ 
sionals  (where  there  were  any)  and  even  women,  had  charge 
of  a  separate  day,  covering  all  the  expenses  incurred  in 
siich  festivals,  and  in  which  the  Church  expenses  were  of 
course  included.  During  these  days,  the  populace,  half 
drunk  (for  the  clergy,  for  obvious  reasons  never  fought 
drunkenness  in  the  lower  classes)  rushed  to  the  churches  to 
pay  for  salves,  rosaries,  prayers  and  masses,  to  offer  lighted 
wax  candles  which  had  been  blessed  by  the  priests  (these 
candles  were  extinguished  shortly  after  being  offered,  melted 
and  sold  again)  to  present  and  hang  at  the  altars  of  saints 
or  from  their  clothes,  small  human  or  animal  figures,  limbs, 
etc.,  made  of  gold  or  silver,  but  more  usually  of  wax  or 
paraffine;  these  offerings  were  sold  by  the  priests  at  the 
doors  of  the  churches.  The  parishioners  knelt  to  kiss  the 
feet,  hands  or  vestments  of  the  images  which  on  these  oc- 


21 


casions  were  taken  down  from  the  altars  and  set  on  bran¬ 
cards  so  that  they  were  within  reach  of  the  lips  of  the 
people. 

In  one  word,  after  four  hundred  years,  other  men,  be¬ 
longing  to  the  same  race  of  grasping  adventurers,  who  under 
Cortez  conquered  the  Aztec  land,  attempted  to  re-establish 
in  Mexico  the  same  social  regime  in  favor  during  the  vice¬ 
roys,  the  same  which  is  still  dominant  in  many  sections  of 
Spain.  In  this  task  they  had  the  support  of  the  reaction¬ 
ary  Mexicans  whose  great  weakness,  (whatever  their  color) 
has  been  to  try  to  pass  themselves  as  Spaniards  or  sons  of 
Spaniards;  and  who  in  conversations,  books,  speeches,  etc., 
always  call  the  Spaniards  (to  the  great  amusement  of  the 
latter)  their  Forefathers  and  claim  as  their  own,  the  glories 
of  the  Latin  race  which  exist  only  in  their  excited  imagina¬ 
tions. 

When  the  reactionaries  really  considered  themselves 
strong,  when  their  preponderance  was  absolute,  when  the 
remnants  of  the  liberal  party  were  scattered,  some  in  the 
more  remote  corners  of  the  republic,  others  in  exile  in 
foreign  lands;  when  the  apostolic  representative  of  the 
Roman  Pope  formally  treating  with  the  federal  govern¬ 
ment  for  the  re-establishment  of  official  relations  with  the 
catholic  pontiff,  the  reactionaries  threw  down  the  mask, 
and  in  the  light  of  the  sun,  the  sun  which  had  shone  on  the 
bloody  battlefields  on  Calpopalpam,  Puebla  and  Querstaro, 
they  organized  the  Catholic  National  Party,  with  the  firm 
and  express  purpose  of  taking  hold  of  the  government  which 
was  already  falling  from  the  trembling  hands  of  the  dic¬ 
tator. 

It  was  then  that  the  dominant  national  conscience  was 
awakened  by  the  call  of  ingenious  apostle  Francisco 
1.  MaderQ,  who  had  been  appointed  by  destiny  to  immolate 
himself  on  the  altar  of  democracy  and  to  undertake  the 
work  which  in  Mexico  was  considered  absurd  and  impos¬ 
sible:  the  overthrowing  of  the  porfirist  rule.  We  say  the 
overthrowing  of  the  porfirist  rule  because  the  object  was 
not  to  oust  the  dictator  who  was  already  within  grasp  of 
death’s  hands,  but  to  put  an  end  to  a  whole  political  system 
enthroned  in  the  nation  and  deeply  rooted  for  over  one 
third  of  a  century. 

But  if  Madero  was  an  apostle  of  democracy,  he  was  not 
a  politician  nor  a  statesman,  nor  a  true  revolutionary:  he 
was  an  awakener  of  consciences,  but  not  a  leader  of  men. 
He  believed  that  Mexico  lacked  only  justice  and  liberty, 
when  it  had  an  excess  of  slaves  and  of  tormentors  without 
the  crushing  of  which  it  was  impossible  to  establish  a 
democracy.  He  imagined  that  a  people  of  serfs,  analphabets 
and  fanatics  could,  by  the  mere  fiat  of  an  illumined  one. 


22 


turn  into  a  nation,  strong,  just,  democratic,  progressive  and 
above  all,  free;  without  remembering  that  freedom  and  its 
corollaries  are  not  the  work  of  a  law  or  the  will  of  one  man, 
but  the  slow  and  bloody  conquest  of  a  convinced  people. 

He  thought  of  destroying  the  nefarious  work  of  the  reac¬ 
tion  without  attacking  or  punishing  its  authors;  and  believ¬ 
ing  that  words  of  concord  could  replace  bullets  and  that 
embraces  could  substitute  guillotines  and  scaffolds,  he  in¬ 
vited  with  candid  amnesities  and  ample  pardons,  all  Mexi¬ 
cans  to  a  union,  a  conciliation  absolutely  impossible  and 
absurd. 

He  forgot  the  end  of  Juarez  and  of  Lerdo  de  Tejada,  and 
granted  absolute,  supreme  liberties  of  which  the  people 
could  not  avail  itself,  since  it  was  an  abject,  ignorant  peo¬ 
ple,  but  which  were  favorable  to  the  pharisees,  the  traitors, 
the  reactionaries  who  in  newspapers  and  tribunes  condemned, 
insulted,  ridiculed  him  and  his  own,  impeding  his  work  un¬ 
der  pretense  of  exerting  the  constitutional  franchises  which 
they  had  never  before  respected. 

Madero’s  generous  and  magnanimous  spirit,  was  also 
credulous  and  weak,  and  he  had  all  the  sweetness,  all  the 
sincerity  of  a  missionary  of  peace  and  love,  ready  to  pardon, 
predestined  to  sacrifice;  he  did  not  have  the  iron,  implacable 
hand,  the  steel  will,  the  granite  energy  of  the  leader  who 
washes  to  remodel  the  soul  and  the  brains  of  a  race. 

He  imagined  that  by  virtue  of  a  speech,  a  vile  slave  could 
be  converted  into  a  conscious  man;  that  the  oppressors  of 
a  nation  could  become  magnanimous  Maecenas,  and  the 
ferocious  praetorians  of  porfirism  could  be  turned  into 
loyal  mandataries  and  defenders  of  the  honor,  peace  and 
liberty  of  the  republic. 

His  vain  dream  of  finding  at  once  a  mother-country  im¬ 
mediately  great,  free  and  happy,  made  him  lose  all  caution, 
all  political  wariness,  despite  the  advices  and  warnings  of 
his  partisans,  and  he  not  only  admitted  within  the  admini¬ 
stration  those  who  a  few  months  before  had  been  pointing 
him  out  as  a  dangerous  visionary,  but  he  permitted  that 
militarism,  the  clergy  and  the  plutocracy  remain  in  their 
strong  and  inexpugnable  positions. 

He  who  could  not  conceive  treason,  and  fell  shortly 
after  under  the  blows  of  Judases,  in  the  midst  of  what  ap¬ 
peared  to  be  the  signal,  irremediable  failure  of  all  the 
democratic  program  in  Mexico;  in  the  midst  of  what  ap¬ 
peared  as  the  most  brilliant  justification  of  the  brutal  por- 
firist  dictatorship. 

But  the  men  who  accepted  his  legacy,  the  men  who  again 
raised  the  standard  of  revolution,  who  believed  in  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  a  resurrection  of  the  mother-country,  and  did 


23 


not  hesitate  to  march  to  reconquer  liberty,  at  whatever  cost, 
these  men  will  not  commit  the  same  blunders  which  the 
Apostle  incurred,  and  shall  know  how  to  profit  by  the  cruel 
lessons  of  their  hard  experience. 

Madero’s  failure,  as  all  political  failures,  presents,  in¬ 
deed,  a  very  valuable  lesson,  because  it  shows  which  path 
must  not  be  followed. 

Even  Huerta’s  reactionary  movement  offers  a  precious 
teaching,  because  it  makes  evident  which  is  the  enemy, 
which  continues  being  the  enemy  of  liberty  and  progress 
in  Mexico,  who  should  be  crushed  forever,  if  we  desire 
that  the  mother-country  be  placed  on  the  straight  path,  and 
to  progress  along  the  lines  of  peace,  democracy,  justice  and 
right. 

That  failure  and  this  reaction  warn  us  unmistakably  that, 
despite  what  Madero  believed,  the  Mexican  people  was  not 
in  a  condition  to  enter  fully  into  the  modern  democratic 
life,  because  it  is  impossible  to  come,  in  a  few  hours,  from 
the  darkness  of  slavery  into  the  meridian  light  of  the  sun 
of  freedom;  and  that  it  was  and  is  indispensable  to  raise  the 
obstacles  which  prevented  the  advance  and  to  tear  from  the 
eyes  of  the  people  the  thick  bandage  of  lies,  fanaticism  and 
ignorance  which  blinded  and  still  blinds  it.  In  other  words, 
and  as  it  has  always  been  recognized  by  the  philosophy  of 
history,  it  was  and  is  necessary  to  prepare  the  people  to  ac¬ 
cept  the  laws,  and  not  to  be  satisfied  with  reproducing  in 
the  country,  excellent  codes  made  for  other  men,  other 
civilizations,  other  conditions. 

The  sagacity  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Constitutionalist 
movement  has  thus  understood  it,  and  for  that  reason  they 
established  the  preconstitutional  periods,  that  is  to  say,  the 
indefinite  period  of  adaptation  and  moulding  which  will 
last  in  Mexico  until  the  people  are  in  conditions  which 
permit  the  practice  of  political  and  social  conquests  which 
have  made  other  nations  great  and  happy,  a  state  which 
the  Mexican  people  has  desired  to  secure,  in  their  long 
expectation  and  work  for  liberty. 

Unhappily,  the  liberty  of  the  people  is  not  the  graceful 
and  ephemeral  flower  which  one  gathers  in  the  pleasant 
corner  of  a  delightful  meadow  crossed  by  milk  and  honey 
streams,  amidst  dances  and  music;  it  is  the  eternal  and 
dangerous  fire  of  Prometheus,  which  one  must  win  on  top 
of  the  steep  mountain,  under  the  -sweep  of  the  hurricane, 
under  the  lightning,  amidst  ruin  and  desolation,  stepping 
over  corpses  of  brothers,  crossing  precipices,  and  rivers  of 
blood. 

And  because  the  Mexican  revolution  is  conscious  of  the 
tears  and  the  blood  which  is  the  price  which  the  Republic 
has  paid,  and  of  the  devastation  caused,  it  understands  that 


24 


it  must  justify  such  devastation,  and  such  shedding  of  tears 
and  blood  before  the  mother-country  and  the  whole  world. 

And  the  only  justification  possible,  the  only  reason  ac¬ 
ceptable,  is;  not  the  conquering,  but  the  definite  annihila¬ 
tion  of  the  reaction;  the  real,  assured,  confirmed  death  of 
clericalism  and  plutocracy,  names  which  in  Mexico,  and  as 
in  Mexico  also  throughout  the  world,  mean  reaction. 

The  reactionary  party  in  Mexico  must,  therefore,  abandon 
all  hope  of  any  possible  conciliation  with  the  triumphant 
constitutionalism,  because  there  is  no  pardon  possible  for 
it,  because  it  will  never  be  re-installed  in  its  old  strong¬ 
holds,  because  neither  under  the  pretext  of  the  freedom 
of  cult,  of  speech,  and  of  teaching  proclaimed  by  the  Con¬ 
stitution  of  ’57,  nor  under  the  pretext  of  am¬ 
nesty,  nor  under  any  other  pretext  whatever,  will 
the  reaction  be  installed  in  the  exercise  of  its  so-called 
rights,  which  are  merely  the  means  of  which  it  avails  it¬ 
self  to  control  the  people  of  Mexico  through  religious  fana¬ 
ticism,  and  which  permit  it  to  be  a  constant  threat  for  all 
republican  institutions  and  for  the  peace  of  the  country, 
as  well  as  an  almost  impassable  obstacle  to  the  nation’s 
development  and  progress. 

The  Federal  Constitution  of  1857  will  not  again  be  in 
force  until  the  exercise  of  those  liberties  can  be  ruled  in  a 
more  efficacious  way;  and  if,  in  order  to  attain  this  object 
it  is  necessary  to  reform  and  modify  it,  the  Revolution 
will  not  hesitate  to  undertake  and  accomplish  this  work. 

For  it  is  necessary  to  complete  the  holy  and  gigantic 
undertaking  of  our  forefathers,  the  immense  labor  of  free¬ 
dom  begun  by  Juarez,  Ocampo,  and  Lerdo  de  Tejada. 

Because  the  clergy  will  no  longer  be  permitted  to  main¬ 
tain  the  low  people  in  ignorance  and  idolatry;  nor  to 
win  over  the  children  of  the  middle  and  upper  classes,  at 
schools,  colleges  and  seminaries,  thus  preparing  generations 
of  traitors,  of  enemies  of  liberty,  progress  and  the  Republic, 
masses  of  slaves  of  the  Catholic  dogma  and  serfs  of  the 
Roman  curia. 

They  will  not  be  allowed  to  control  woman,  fomenting 
her  superstitution,  developing  habits  of  laziness  and  isola¬ 
tion  as  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  keeping  her  subject  to 
fanaticism  and  backwardness,  by  means  of  incessant  re- 
'  ligious  practices  carried  on  day  and  night  in  churches  and 
sanctuaries,  oratories,  and  convents,  and  in  the  fraternities, 
associations  and  other  societies  wherein  feminine  vanity 
is  fanned  and  flattered  making  women  believe  that  they 
are  servants,  daughters  and  even  sisters  of  each  and  every 
personification  of  Catholicism. 

They  will  not  be  permitted  to  exert  their  ministry  unless 
they  are  previously  married,  which  is  the  only  means  to 


25 


prevent  their  being  a  constant  real  and  formidable  menace 
to  the  tranquility,  harmony  and  purity  of  homes. 

They  shall  not  be  permitted  to  deceive  and  dominate  the 
low  classes,  especially  women,  and  distort  all  moral  ideas 
by  means  of  the  confessional,  which  is  nothing  but  a  win¬ 
dow  open  on  every  home  and  every  conscience;  nor  will 
they  be  permitted  to  make  any  one  believe  they  can  absolve, 
and  that  by  virtue  of  a  power  and  in  the  exercise  of  a 
ministry  which  they  have  received  from  the  Divinity,  that 
they  can  wash  and  nullify  merely  by  learning  of  them 
all  sins,  all  crimes,  even  the  rnost  abominable,  and  excuse 
and  tolerate  the  most  absolute  violations  of  the  moral  and 
written  laws. 

They  shall  not  exploit  the  people  in  the  future  by  means 
of  their  interminable  religious  and  profane  festivities,  or 
by  nevaines,  processions,  rogatives  and  masses  subject  to 
a  tariff.  Nor  shall  they  continue  selling  spiritual  and  tem¬ 
poral  grace,  pardons,  indulgences  and  the  heaven. 

They  shall  not  maintain  in  the  future  the  idolatry  of  the 
people,  making  it  kneel  before  dirty  pictures  representing 
men,  women  and  animals,  which  usurp  the  name  and  the 
idea  of  the  Supreme  Being,  and  distort,  equivocate  and 
prevent  all  high  moral  conception  of  the  world  system  and 
of  the  destiny  of  man  on  earth. 

They  shall  not  make  believe  that  the  rain  on  the  fields, 
the  light  of  the  sky,  the  good  crops,  the  realization  of 
purposes,  the  result  of  business  and  enterprises,  the  satis¬ 
faction  of  desires,  epidemics,  floods,  earthquakes  and  other 
calamities,  health  of  persons  and  of  animals,  the  securing 
of  lovers,  the  luck  of  marriages,  the  sterility  in  women  and 
impotency  in  men,  depend,  not  on  human  effort  or  well 
directed  will,  or  natural  causes,  common  to  all  times,  to  all 
countries,  races  and  beings,  but  on  the  vain  caprice  of 
mysterious  and  absurd  trinities,  the  changeable  will  of 
christs,  virgins  and  saints,  whose  favor  can  be  purchased 
by  means  of  offerings,  donations  and  alms  to  the  Church, 
or  by  prayers,  paid  for,  offered  specially  by  priests. 

They  shall  not  be  permitted  to  publish  under  the  title 
of  educative  works,  books  and  pamphlets  in  which  they 
attack  and  outrage  the  memory  of  national  heroes,  the  in¬ 
stitutions  of  the  republic,  in  which  they  disown  and  deny 
the  conquests  of  science  and  experience,  in  which  the 
triumphs  of  sociology  and  modern  psychology  are  con¬ 
demned,  in  which  they  place  the  object  of  human  life  out¬ 
side  of  life  itself,  in  which  they  counsel  hate  to  beauty,  to 
matter  and  to  sexual  love,  and  the  poor  and  the  oppressed 
are  exhorted  to  persevere  in  it,  and  to  become  resigned  to 
their  poverty  and  their  slavery,  to  live  and  desire  it.  And 
they  shall  not  be  permitted  in  their  papers,  circulars,  pas- 


26 


toral  letters  and  sermons,  to  attack  all  reputations,  deride 
all  virtue,  when  these  merits,  virtues  and  reputations  are 
those  of  individuals  who  are  not  with  them,  or  who  combat 
them. 

They  shall  not  be  able  to  continue  enriching  themselves 
with  the  censurable  trade  in  relics,  images,  scapularies, 
saints,  votive  offerings,  medals,  crosses  and  waters,  and 
blessed  candles,  to  the  evident  detriment  of  the  true  spiritual 
welfare  and  especially  the  temporal  welfare  of  their  adepts. 

They  shall  no  longer  attempt  against  public  health  by 
means  of  their  dirty  fountains  of  blessed  water,  their  chants 
over  corpses,  their  vigils,  their  large  gatherings  within  half 
closed  temples;  nor  shall  they  continue  contributing  to  the 
empoverishment  and  degeneration  of  the  race  for  the  direct 
advantage  of  the  masters  and  in  flagrant  violation  of  the 
law,  granting  to  Indians  and  miserable  dependents  special 
permit  to  work  on  Sundays,  and  forcing  them  to  imbecile 
fasts  and  abstinences,  under  the  pretext  that  eating  certain 
food  on  certain  days  is  an  offense  and  a  sin  against  the 
Lord. 

They  shall  not  be  allowed  to  build  and  open  their  churches, 
their  chapels  and  sanctuaries  to  pursue  thereby  their  work 
of  exploitation,  retrocess  and  lies,  nor  will  they  be  permitted 
to  found  or  maintain  beneficent  associations,  or  institutions, 
wherein,  forgetting  that  Christian  charity  must  be  still 
blinder  than  justice,  they  demand  that  the  sick  one,  the 
needy,  the  orphan,  in  order  to  get  help,  must  show  himself 
a  Catholic,  Apostolic  Roman. 

They  shall  not  be  permitted  to  place  collection  boxes  in 
churches,  nor  demand,  directly  or  indirectly,  contributions, 
ofierings  or  alms;  nor  adorn  their  temples,  and  images 
with  precious  metals  and  stones,  not  even  with  the  excuse 
that  the  donations  are  expontaneous  offerings  from  the 
people. 

They  shall  not  continue  living  in  sumptuous  palaces  be¬ 
longing  to  the  Nation,  under  the  pretext  that  these  palaces 
were  dependencies  of  the  churches;  nor  will  they  be  per¬ 
mitted  to  monopolize  earthly  goods,  they  whose  kingdom 
is  not  of  this  earth. 

Finally,  it  will  no  longer  be  tolerated  that  within  the 
national  organization  there  exist  another  organization  con¬ 
stituted  of  foreigners  and  depending  from  the  Roman  Pon¬ 
tiff,  for  in  the  Republic,  in  order  to  practice  as  a  catholic 
priest,  it  will  be  necessary  to  be  of  Mexican  birth,  to  promise, 
under  severe  penalties,  to  comply  strictly  with  our  laws  and 
to  obey  our  authorities,  besides  possessing  other  requisites 
of  instruction,  morality  and  any  others  required  by  the  cor¬ 
responding  by-laws. 


27 


By  no  means  whatever  will  they  be  permitted  to  belong, 
directly  or  indirectly,  individually  or  collectively,  by  word 
or  by  writing,  to  boards,  brotherhoods,  corporations,  soci¬ 
eties  or  parties  which  may  even  remotely,  have  a  political 
object. 

Because  all  that,  which,  in  accordance  with  what  has  been 
said  before,  must  be  forbidden,  is  what  constitutes  the 
wicked,  perverse,  criminal  work  of  the  catholic  clergy,  and 
should  be  destroyed. 

As  we  stated  at  the  beginning  of  this  work,  unless  the 
Americans  take  the  Mexican  standpoint,  they  are  unable 
to  understand  and  to  judge  the  work  of  clericalism  in  Mex¬ 
ico,  and  the  reason  of  the  prosecution  begun  against  it. 

As  we  said  before,  the  people  of  the  United  States,  the 
immense  majority  of  which  is  formed  by  individuals  edu¬ 
cated  in  the  protestant  religion,  economical,  simple,  liberal, 
and  based  on  the  free  examen,  cannot  even  conceive  to 
what  extent  the  catholic  fanaticism  in  a  country  almost  ab¬ 
solutely  analphabet  as  is  Mexico  and  populated  by  indi¬ 
viduals  whose  moral  and  religious  conceptions  remain  on 
the  same  level  they  had  at  the  time  of  the  conquest,  imply 
an  obstacle  to  all  purpose  of  real  civilization  and  progress. 

Protestant  Americans  cannot  understand  all  the  abomina¬ 
tion  enclosed  within  Mexican  Catholicism,  since  they  have 
no  priests  from  Rome  who  believe  themselves  superior  to 
the  other  mortals,  nor  have  they  the  idolatric  practices  and 
the  so-called  sacraments,  especially  that  of  confession, 
which  is  only  an  instrument  to  penetrate  into  the  homes 
and  the  consciences  and  rule  over  them. 

Neither  can  it  be  understood,  by  the  educated  members 
of  the  catholic  part  of  the  United  States.  Because  there  is 
an  abyss  of  centuries  and  races  between  their  cultured,  dis¬ 
creet,  moderate  Catholicism,  modified  and  modernized,  if 
we  may  call  it  so,  and  the  catholic  idolatry,  of  the  Mexican 
masses,  mediaeval  and  savage  taught,  propagated  and  ap¬ 
plied  by  Spanish  priests,  exactly  similar  in  intellect  and  in 
morality  to  those  who,  with  the  cross  in  one  hand  and  the 
sword  in  the  other,  accompanied  the  ferocious  conquerors 
of  Anahuac;  those  who  destroyed,  breaking  and  burning, 
even  the  slightest  vestiges  of  the  aboriginal  civilizations, 
those  who  preached  christianism  while  discussing  if  the 
Indian  had  a  soul  or  not;  those  who  to  the  sacrifical  stone 
of  the  Aztecs,  whereon  the  victim’s  breast  was  opened  to 
extract  the  heart  and  offer  it  to  their  sanguinary  deities, 
substituted  the  frightful  fires  of  the  Inquisition  wherein, 
in  the  name  of  a  God  of  mercy  and  love,  they  slowly  burned 
the  trembling  flesh  of  the  heretics. 

The  great  figures  of  Cardinal  Gibbons  and  Archbishop 
Ireland  the  illustrious  pre-catholic  American  prelates,  who 


28 


have  started  democratic  campaigns  in  favor  of  the  work¬ 
ingmen  and  the  oppressed,  with  their  modernist  tendencies, 
with  their  vain  attempts  to  conciliate  catholic  religion  with 
the  conquests  of  civilization  and  Science,  attempts  wherein 
they  have  not  hesitated  to  stand  firm  against  the  papal 
power,  have  no  counterpart,  and  can  have  no  counterpart 
in  Mexico.  To  these  great  men  who  vainly  search  an  open¬ 
ing  on  the  iron  walls  of  the  catholic  dogmatism,  the  Mexi¬ 
can  clergy  can  only  compare  the  miserable  figure  of  the 
traitor  Labastida,  archbishop  of  Mexico,  who  went  abroad 
to  I  beg  for  a  foreign  scepter  to  come  and  rule  over  Mexico, 
th^  repugnant  personality  of  the  notorious  Plancarte, 
scandalously  stealing  the  treasures  of  Sanctuary  of 
Guadeloupe,  the  mean  profiles  of  the  Spanish  priests  of 
contemporaneous  Mexico,  ignorant,  fanatical,  ambitious, 
loafers  and  thieves,  who  on  hearing  of  the  triumphs  of  the 
Constitutionalism,  fled  carrying,  not  their  miraculous  images 
of  clay  and  papier  mache,  which  they  left  in  the  churches 
at  the  mercy  of  the  enemy,  but  the  rich  jewels,  the  gold 
and  silver,  the  dazzling  gems  with  which  the  stupidity  of 
a  whole  country  had  adorned  the  idols;  jewels  which  were 
converted  into  dollars  and  have  assured  their  possessors  a 
life  of  ease  and  comfort  in  foreign  countries. 

.  The  Constitutionalism,  which  has  been  exposed  before 
the  American  people  as  being  atheist  and  the  systematic 
enemy  of  all  religious  idea,  shows,  therefore,  that  it  only 
attacks  the  catholic  clergy  in  Mexico,  and  that  after  so  many 
lessons  during  more  than  a  century  of  bloody  fights,  the 
latter  will  not  be  permitted  to  take  refuge  under  the  laws 
of  the  republic  in  order  to  attack  it  with  safety. 

The  revolution  does  not  oppose  the  religious  idea;  good 
proof  of  this  is  that  no  complaints  have  been  made  by  the 
protestant  clergy  and  parishioners,  which,  although  in  a  re¬ 
duced  number,  exist  in  the  Republic.  Furthermore,  the 
liberals  of  Mexico  would  be  pleased  to  see  that  the  directing 
centers  of  American  protestantism  would  send  good  and 
numerous  missionaries  which  no  doubt  would  help  to  de- 
fanatize  the  people.  No  doubt  they  could  count  on  the 
moral  and  material  help  of  the  Government  which  would 
let  them  use,  free  of  rent,  many  of  the  temples  which  to 
date  have  been  used  by  the  catholics. 

However  it  may  be,  the  American  public  should  not  admit 
the  interested  and  foul  attacks  which  the  reactionary  party 
incessantly  directs  against  the  Constitutionalism,  by  rea¬ 
son  of  the  religious  question. 

The  descendants  of  the  European  people  which  four 
centuries  ago,  from  Martin  Luther  and  the  king  of  Eng¬ 
land  and  the  German  Princes,  opposed  the  power  of  the 
Catholic  Church  and  knew  how  to  vanquish  it,  upsetting 


29 


the  enormous  barrier  of  fanaticism  and  ignorance,  tyranny 
and  cruelty  which  obstructed  the  path  of  progress,  and 
making  possible  the  birth  of  the  modern  spirit  and  the 
formation  of  the  vigorous  and  liberal  people  of  the  North 
of  Europe,  which  since  then  have  been  the  type  and  model 
of  civilization  for  the  whole  world,  cannot  and  must  not, 
unless  they  are  inconsequent  with  their  own  doctrines  and 
ideals,  condemn,  but  on  the  contrary,  approve,  help  and 
favor  the  Mexican  liberal  intellectuality,  fighting  at  the 
present  time,  the  last  fight,  the  decisive  battle  against  the 
power  of  clericalism,  and  which  wishes  for  its  country  the 
same  advantage  and  possibilities  of  progress  which  so  many 
years  ago  were  achieved  by  their  European  friends,  and 
which  the  latter  legated  to  their  children  the  North  Ameri¬ 
cans  of  today. 

They  should  consider  the  case  of  Mexico  in  what  relates 
to  the  religious  campaign,  as  a  simple  isolated  episode  in 
the  history  of  the  terrible  struggle  between  liberalism  and 
catholic  dogmatism. 

They  should  bear  in  mind  that  sooner  or  later,  the  same 
convulsions  will  shake  the  people  in  America  and  in  Europe 
which  still  are  under  the  rule  of  papism. 

They  must  remember  that  the  people  and  the  press  of  the 
United  States,  who  some  years  ago  applauded  the  gigantic 
labor  cleansing  which,  despite  the  protests  of  a  great  part 
of  the  people,  was  undertaken  by  the  Government  of  the 
noble  and  cultured  France  in  order  to  separate  the  Church 
from  the  State,  to  put  an  end  to  religious  associations,  to 
inventory  as  property  of  the  nation,  the  property  of  the 
clergy,  to  put  an  end  to  the  ignominious  abuses  of  the 
catholic  and  liberalist  parties,  cannot  and  must  not,  without 
a  shameless  revolt  forcing  them,  condemn  the  same  under¬ 
taking  when  and  because  it  is  Mexico  that  is  in  question, 
despite  the  fact  that  in  our  Spanish-American  people,  the 
dominion  and  the  despotism  of  the  clergy  reached  a  height 
never  paralleled  in  history. 

They  should  take  into  account  that  they  themselves  would 
be  staggering  under  the  weight  of  such  an  atrocious  curse, 
if  instead  of  being  colonized  by  the  children  of  free  and 
protestant  England,  and  of  having  developed  by  the 
affluence  of  immigration  of  other  protestant  countries  of 
Europe,  they  had  had  the  misfortune  of  having  been  colo¬ 
nized  by  the  fanatical  Spaniards  of  the  time  of  Charles  V 
and  Philip  II,  whose  inheritance  of  ignorance  and  obscuran¬ 
tism  is  still  alive  in  the  so-called  Latin  countries  of  the 
American  continent. 

Finally,  they  should  fear  to  become  involved  in  similar 
struggles,  if  the  development  of  Catholicism  continues,  and 
if  the  latter  finally  succeeds  in  organizing  its  so-called 


30 


National  Catholic  Party,  similar  to  that  which  caused  the 
terrible  war  which  is  still  being  waged. 

In  his  famous  speech  at  Indianapolis,  President  Wilson 
recognized  the  right  of  the  Mexican  people  to  spill  their 
blood  for  the  conquest  of  their  political  and  social  liberties, 
which  have  cost  so  much  to  all  countries  on  earth.  But 
this  recognition  must  also  relate  to  the  campaign  now  be¬ 
ing  waged  with  the  object  that  the  Mexicans  may  secure 
liberty  of  conscience,  without  which  their  triumphs  on  the 
social  and  political  fields  however  brilliant,  would  be  void 
and  ephemeral. 

Because  the  only  man  lul/io  is  really  free,  is  he  who  has 
succeeded  in  emancipating  himself  from  the  ominous  yoke 
of  dogma  and  tradition. 

Rodlofo  Menendez  Mena. 


Merida,  January,  1916. 


